Three Stalwart Stanza Poem by Sonny Rainshine

I remember when she first
responded to the cicadas,
that stentorian August
when the winged choirs
chanted their hallelujahs
in the crinkly grass.

I wish they would stop,
she murmured, hand on ears,
a gathering terror lapping
at the edges of her eyes.
It’s as though all the women
of the world were keening
and all the old men of the world
were rasping, a distorted OM
from cauterized larynxes
of Eastern monks.

Her cri-de-coeur
resounded in the ponderous air
and converged with the desperate
telegraphy of the insects,
then subsided just within the rhythm
of the cicadas’ song,
rising and falling like the tide
under the moon,
as she let go her breath.